Language is a social practice with specific linguistic and social codes used in specific contexts and these codes are often inherited at young age, usually within the family and in formal education. Bourdieu (1991) coined the term 'capital' to describe the accumulation of linguistic and social skills that predetermines a person's position in society. For many European countries, linguistic skills are often seen as a valuable capital necessary for migrants to be able to successfully integrate into their societies. This can be seen in Sweden where the government places great emphasis on the importance for migrants to learn Swedish in order to them to be able to participate fully in Swedish society (Fejes & Dahlstedt, 2017). In addition, knowledge of the Swedish language is seen as one of the most important skills for migrants if they were to enter the labour market. However, the migrants' capital, accumulated before coming to Sweden, can be valued differently depending on different contexts (Zschomler, 2019). Blommaert (2007) notes that one of the sociolinguistic effects of mobility is the detachment of language practices from their "original" space as one moves to a new space. Linguistic and social capital may not always be transferrable in new spaces thus one has to learn not just new languages but also new codes.
The presentation is based on data from an ongoing research project 'The multilingual situation of deaf refugees in Sweden' which focuses on deaf migrants' language learning, specifically Swedish Sign Language and Swedish, in four folk high schools across Sweden. The data is generated using an ethnographic approach of classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with the migrants and the teachers. For this presentation, the focus will be on the relation between deaf migrants' backgrounds, particularly their language background, and the classrooms' communication and teaching practices.
The presentation will show how learning new languages, for deaf migrants, sometimes requires specific previous knowledge. For instance, the migrants not only need to understand the meanings behind metaphors, they also need to know what metaphors are and how to use them. In addition, certain tasks assigned by the teachers are culturally-related and require the migrants to know the Swedish way of life in order to be able to do these tasks. These instances show that some communication practices as well as teachings in the classrooms require migrants to have certain linguistic and social capital that need to be accumulated beforehand.
References
Blommaert, J. (2007) Sociolinguistic scales. Intercultural Pragmatics, 4-1, 1-9.
Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power. Polity Press.
Fejes & Dahlstedt (2017) Popular education, migration and a discourse of inclusion. Studies in the Education of Adults, 49(2), 214-227.
Zschomler, S. (2019) 'Language is your dignity': Migration, linguistic capital, and the experience of re/de-valuation. Languages, 4(3), 64.
